What interfaces exist for working on scholarly resources housed in libraries?

At the Emory Libraries, we're considering a project to develop an interface to improve the usability for our Yellowbacks collections. We would like to have an environment where scholars could do many different things: full-text searching, text analysis, multi-page comparison, annotations (that you can keep private or share), and more. Essentially, we're trying to let people do what they normally would to books, but with the books that aren't readily accessible or are in special collections

Of course, we don't want to only build something that would be useful for one small collection. The interface we're envisioning would be something that could be used with much of our digital collections as well as the collections of other schools. But we're also aware that we're probably not the first to have this idea. We're currently conducting an environmental scan to make sure we can actually contribute something new or to identify those with whom we can collaborate.

So, with that in mind, can you please tell me what interfaces already exist for working on scholarly resources housed in libraries?

So, Brian, I suspect you're not getting an immediate response to this because a) it's a huge question and b) it would help to know more about your local situation. In what format will the data be? Page images and TEI-encoded texts? When you say "housed in libraries" do you mean "in a library's digital repository?" -- and what kind of repo might that be at Emory?

Finally, you sometimes talk about "an interface" but also list a lot of separate functions, which may in fact be different tools that can be brought together in a custom way for your purposes. I can imagine meeting the needs you describe with tools like XTF, Omeka (plus various plugins), TAPoR, TILE, Juxta, and a bunch more.

I bet some more info from you on local resources and data formats, and a narrower set of discrete questions will yield results.

If you're looking for something that can operate with existing digital library/collection systems, NINES/Collex could be a great option.

If you're looking for a digital library system with integrated tools, the system powering the Digital Library of the Caribbean and the Florida Digital Newspaper Library (and a lot of others) is SobekCM and it supports most of this functionality. These pages have more information or please contact me with any questions:http://dloc.com/sobekcmhttp://dloc.com/UF00099640/00002/pdfhttp://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00001410
We're currently working with faculty members to refine these tools to match their current methods/workflows. For this, we're still discussing needs/wants and gathering feedback and will make changes once we have usable information to do so. I don't know that any of us are certain of what and how we want all of these tools to work. Any additional data would be great information to inform my work as well.